Intel Releases 2.3 RC Driver w/ XvMC

In Linux graphics news unrelated to the recentATI/AMDexcitements, Intel has just released the xf86-video-intel 2.2.99.901 driver. This driver is meant to serve as the first release candidate for what will become xf86-video-intel 2.3.0. The biggest change since the 2.2 release is that the XvMC support has been merged to master! Intel's open-source XvMC implementation currently works with the Intel 915, 945 and G33 IGPs, but the 965 XvMC support is currently problematic. Intel's XvMC support was previously found in a separate development branch. Aside from these video playback improvements, the Intel 2.3 RC1 driver has many bug-fixes, a few added quirks, code cleanups, and other improvements.

XvMC stands for X-Video Motion Compensation and allows MPEG decoding to be offloaded to the GPU. Right now MPEG is the only format supported, but Intel's Keith Packard mentioned at FOSDEM that on his agenda is bringing more video standards to XvMC. Intel is also the company behind VA-API, which is a new Video Acceleration API with multiple standards support, but it's currently not ready for prime-time.

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